Tag Archives: dinner

I made this for dinner four days ago and have not been able to stop thinking about it since. I’ve been fantasizing about it, remembering the flavors and wondering how soon is too soon to make it again. (Tomorrow? Do I have to wait a few weeks or can I get away with tomorrow?) Just now I discovered about 10 bites worth of leftovers in the fridge and I almost wet myself with joy. It’s 8:00pm but I didn’t care: I heated it up and scarfed it down. I just might have a Masala problem.

But it’s for a good reason! I cannot even begin to describe to you all how insanely delicious this is. The creamy-spicy sauce, the tumeric-flavored rice, the tender broiled chicken…. Oh, my goodness. Beyond delicious.

What really takes it over the top, though? The cilantro chutney that goes along with it. Oh, people. It’s cool and fresh and absolute perfection when combined with the spiciness of the masala sauce.

There is no way words can do any justice to this meal. You simply just have to take my word for it. AND GO MAKE IT. It is seriously that good. I know I say that a lot, but, folks, this time I really, really mean it.

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Most people have never eaten, or even considered eating, lamb shanks. Let me rephrase: Most AMERICANS have never considered it. Because, certainly, they’re common enough in the rest of the world – particularly the Mediterranean and Middle East. For some reason, though, lamb has an odd reputation in America and most Americans seem afraid of going anywhere near it.

My grandmother immigrated from Scotland, land of sheep, so my mother grew up eating plenty of lamb. And, therefore, I did too. But I’d never made shanks until about 10 years ago when my mother found this recipe and started making it. And I was instantly in love.

I love a good roasted leg of lamb as well as the next (non-American) person. But these shanks are now my favorite form of lamb. They are so tender – just falling off the bone, melting in your mouth, tender – and full of exquisite flavor. Probably because they’re so common in the middle east, this recipe has tons of spices.

Don’t be scared! It looks like a lot of flavor, but I promise you it’s PERFECT.

The thing with shanks is that they have to cook for a really long time to make them tender. There’s a pretty strong facia (or whatever) covering all the meat that needs to be cooked slowly to tenderize them. This is not a meal you can whip up in half an hour. So, this is a meal for a day off or a weekend. Or if, like me, you do your work at home it can be an any-day-of-the-week meal! But it’s especially good on cold, rainy, or blustery days. The perfect warm-your-bones sort of meal!

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When I was very small, my mother worked at a restaurant owned by a German guy named Heinrich. Heinrich named the restaurant after himself. Or, rather, after the nickname for the name “Heinrich.”

Do you know the nickname for Heinrich?

Do you see where this is going?

Yes. Dear old Heinrich named his restaurant “Heinie’s.” I am not joking.

One would think that having a name that is the slang term for one’s butt would have turned people off from wanting to eat there, but he actually did pretty good business. And he apparently had pretty good food.

One of the dishes that he made was something called Tallerine. Until precisely 5 minutes ago, I’d always believed he invented this dish, because I’ve never met anyone else who knew about it. I searched online just to make sure, though – you know, so that I wouldn’t be wrong on the internet – and was surprised to find tons of pages about it. So, Heinie didn’t invent it. But he did give my family the idea for making it, and I’ve never in my life met anyone else who knew about it, so he still gets the credit as far as I’m concerned!

Tallerine (or my version of it, at any rate) is pasta, ground beef, tomatoes, corn, and spices mixed together and then baked with shredded cheddar cheese on top. It’s a simple and yet delicious combination of flavors, and is a staple in our house because it’s so easy and is an all-in-one dish. I’ll often make the meat part ahead of time and freeze it, so on busy days all I have to do is thaw it and make the pasta, and then stick it in the oven. This is a great recipe to have in your repertoire to pull out when you don’t know what else to make!

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I don’t like tomatoes. Raw, I mean. I never really have – though I’m able to tolerate them much more now than I did when I was younger.

So WHY do I love this so much?! I don’t know. Maybe there’s some sort of magical process that happens when balsamic vinegar and garlic meet raw tomatoes. Some sort of voodoo alchemy that turns something I otherwise can’t stand into something I can’t get enough of!

This, really, is all the endorsement you need about how amazing this recipe is. If even tomato-hating melikes it you know it’s good!! It’s good on top of buttery toast (like I’m about to show you.) It’s good on top of chicken for Bruschetta Chicken. It’s good with chunks of fresh mozzarella mixed in as a salad. You can take this as a starting point and use your imagination about it!

This is what you do.

Take some olive oil and drizzle it around a pan. Like 3 Tbsp or so.

And add in about 5 minced garlic cloves and cook them until they just start to turn golden.

Now pour the garlic together with EVERY SINGLE DROP of that garlicky olive oil in a bowl.

Chop up some red onion and tomatoes. This can be cherry tomatoes cut in half, or larger tomatoes cut into chunks. I found these gorgeous yellow and red babies at the farmer’s market, so that’s what I used. Dump them in the bowl and stir around.

Chop up plenty of fresh basil and stick it in. Mmmmm! Fresh basil is the bomb.

Sprinkle in some salt and pepper, and then drizzle in some balsamic vinegar.

Now you taste. Does it need more vinegar? More basil, salt, or pepper? Add it in!

As I said above, you can use this in lots of different ways, not just traditional bruschetta. Use your imagination! But if you’re wanting bruschetta, this is what you do to make it miraculous.

Get a loaf of bakery bread. For this diet it will have to be a whole grain bread. I haven’t had luck with finding 100% whole wheat breads at the bakery that I like, so I usually compromise and buy one that has whole wheat as the first ingredient, but also has white flour. This seems to work fine for me as long as I don’t overdo it. You have to be the judge of what works for your body!

Slice it up. Then melt several Tbsp of butter in a pan. Preferably the same pan you used to cook up the garlic so that you can take advantage of all that garlic goodness!

Then stick the bread in the pan and cook until nice and golden brown. Flip it over and toast the other side too. (Though the second side won’t be as golden since most of the butter was soaked up by the first side.)

Spoon the tomatoes on top and devour. It’s messy. I’d advise you not do this in front of people you’re trying to impress.

The farm that hosts our CSA, Snipes, is just about 2 miles from our house. It’s an old farm that has been in the Snipes family for 8 generations!! Our entire region used to be farmland, but theirs is the only one left, still standing after all these years right in the middle of urban sprawl. It’s really something of a miracle. So when they announced last spring that they were starting animal shares (for grass-fed/pastured meat, milk, and eggs) I jumped on board! It’s really pretty cool that, now, the meat we eat is raised just down the road from where we live.

We bought a pig share and a cow share, since they were the most affordable, and it’s been great to be able to see those animals grazing around. It’s a real comfort to know without a doubt the condition my meat is in. It’s not only important to me for humane reasons, but also for health reasons.

Here are the piggies. They forage free in the brush, and are moved every couple months or so to get new land to dig up!

Compare that to the way factory farmed pork and ham that’s sold in the supermarket is raised. How healthy do you think these animals really are, cooped up like that, eating only grain (which is probably GMO)? Pigs aren’t supposed to eat grain – they’re supposed to eat roots and bugs and plants. And the meat from animals that eat their natural diet is exponentially healthier for us!!

And here’s one of the cows, grazing away happily.

We started getting our pig share in the early summer, and an interesting thing happened. As we were eating our first pork chops I was intimately aware of the animal that had died so that we could have that meal. It wasn’t just some anonymous “meat” from the store – it was an actual animal I had met. So in our blessing before dinner I mentioned it, and asked that God help us not take for granted the lives that give us our food.

I’ve also found myself being very conscious of not wasting any of it. I want every morsel to be eaten or used to make soup or something. I find myself wanting to honor the life of the animal by not wasting it.

So it’s all been an interesting – and I think beneficial – change in how we view the meat that we eat.

I grew up in Arkansas, in a small town that was half an hour away from an even smaller town that had the best BBQ in the galaxy: Craig’s Bar-B-Q. The food is so good there that when John Edwards was running for president he had his tour bus go out of the way to make a stop at this place. And DeVall’s Bluff (where Craig’s is located) is not the sort of town you accidentally go through. It’s out of the way no matter where you’re going. But, the BBQ at Craig’s is so good that it’s totally worth it.

It’s the kind of place that the term “hole in the wall” was made for. If you didn’t know what it was, there’s no way you’d stop there and think, “I’ll buy something from this place and put it in my mouth.” It looks like a complete dive on the outside, and the inside isn’t any better, with old dark wood panelling and tables that wobble without the random things shoved under the legs, and a general atmosphere of shabbiness.

But once you bite into one of their sandwiches, you don’t give a fig about the wobbly tables or the grease-stained walls. You just want another one.

This is my husband enjoying his Craig’s BBQ. He grew up in Pennsylvania, and had literally never had a proper BBQ sandwich before this moment. He didn’t KNOW he’d never had proper BBQ before, but he knew it the minute he bit into one of these babies. (Incidentally, why is it impossible to find decent BBQ north of the Mason Dixon line? I have never understood this. But it’s true.)

I miss those BBQ sandwiches. Fiercely. It’s probably just as well that living in the Northeast only leaves me with pale imitations of BBQ, because this way I’m not really tempted by anything. The sugars in these sauces are pretty over the top. I tried to make my own BBQ sauce without (or with greatly reduced) sweeteners, and it was just not worth it. At least not when I’m remembering the magic that was Craig’s.

So I decided to try to go a completely different route and attempt a Carolina BBQ instead.

Carolina BBQ is vinegar based, instead of ketchup/molasses based, so it’s much easier to figure out a reduced-sweetener version. Also, I don’t have fond childhood memories of Carolina BBQ embedded in my head making me dissatisfied with anything that’s not exactly authentic, so I can play around a bit more.

(If you have fond childhood memories of Carolina BBQ dancing around in your head, I have no idea how this will hold up for you. We thought it was delish. But you’ll have to judge for yourself!)

This recipe does have some whole food sweeteners in it, but not much. What makes BBQ good is that combination of sweet and tangy, and so it’s impossible to leave it out altogether. However, it’s not much, and this recipe will be just fine for people who aren’t affected as much by whole food sweeteners, or who have gotten their inflammation under control and are just maintaining now. This recipe is simple in that it doesn’t take much work at all. But it’s time consuming since it involves a lot of brining and slow cooking. So plan ahead!

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I was in Whole Foods the other day to bulk up on my spelt supply (since flour from their bulk bins are lots fresher than the packaged stuff on the shelves) and on my way in I was stopped by someone giving free samples in the entryway.

I didn’t really want to stop, because we all know that the real price of those “free samples” is being guilted into buying the thing afterwards. There’s this unspoken, “Hey, I just gave you free food and you’re NOT going to buy my product?! What kind of rude ingrate are you, anyway?” thing that happens. But he was very persistent about his invitation to sample his wares, in a way that made me feel rude to just sweep by.

“You have to try some of this salad dressing!” he said. “It’s personally made and bottled by my family with all natural ingredients. What kind do you want to taste?”

He had little cups with a few pieces of spinach in each one, and different dressings on top.

“Well,” I said, “it depends on what’s in it.” I thought I was being clever, here, because I was fairly certain that I wouldn’t be able to eat what was in the dressing. Sure out.

He grinned, sensing a sale. “I have a goal to beat the world record for most salad dressing sales in one day, and I just know you’re going to help me out!”

“There’s a record for the most salad dressing sales in one day?”

“There’s a record for everything.”

Huh.

“So, what kind do you want? They’re only $6.50 each! All natural, and supporting a family business!”

“Ah, em…” I hedged. “I’ll, ah, think about it and come back.”

His face fell and every trace of affable humor disappeared. He looked pretty ticked off, honestly. Granted, his assumption that I wasn’t actually going to return was right, but still. You need to retain your salesman mask, man. Come on, now.

I felt bad. (Because I have this whole problem where I want people around me to feel good about everything, which is basically an impossible thing to do.) But there was NO WAY I was going to pay $6.50 for that dressing! I mean, oil, vinegar, lemon, mustard, and salt? Do you know how CHEAP that is?

His sales pitch of “see how simple this is” actually is only proof for how simple it is to make it yourself.

Last spring I chaperoned a field trip with my son’s class to Snipes, the farm near us. After they took a tour, the kids picked lettuce and then stuck a bunch of stuff in a blender to make dressing.

Did you catch that? A crowd of 9 year olds stuck a bunch of stuff in a blender and made dressing. See?! So, you now have no excuses.

And, they all loved it. I heard kids left and right saying, “Can I have more?” and “This is the best salad ever!” So I took a picture of the recipe that was hanging on the wall.

Anyone can do this. You literally take all that stuff, stick it in a blender, and blend away until it’s nice and creamy. That’s it.

I pretty much stick to the recipe. For the herbs, I just put in whatever sounds good that I have on hand fresh. Sometimes I don’t put any in at all. Sometimes I add lemon juice. You pretty much just start with the basic ingredients, taste, and go from there. I’ll also add a little water to thin it out a little, and that seems to help it not get so solid (and makes it more pourable) after being in the fridge.

But, it’s seriously simple, and seriously yummy. If you’ve been looking for a basic salad dressing that doesn’t have all the sugars and non-food ingredients of store bought, this is it!

Yum yum!

Note: I usually double or triple this recipe so that I have it for a while. A single recipe will serve 4-6 people, but not leave any left over.

½ Tbsp grated parmesan cheese (the kind from the deli section, not the stuff on the shelf!)

1 garlic clove, minced

⅛ tsp salt

⅛ tsp fresh ground pepper

1 tsp water (omit if using lemon juice)

Optional: 1 tsp fresh herbs (whatever you have on hand)

Optional: 1 Tbsp maple syrup

Optional: Juice of a lemon (if you have it on hand)

Instructions

Take all the ingredients, put them in a blender, and blend until they're nice and creamy. Unless you have a super-high-powered blender, mince the garlic first or it won't chop up right. That's it. You can experiment with different vinegars (red wine, apple cider, etc.), different kinds of herbs, things like mustard, or whatever else sounds interesting to you.